Here’s just one small indication of how much red tapes and political wrangling awaits as Orlando and Miami join MLS. We can all expect to see a bushel of stories along these lines in the days, weeks, months and years – yes, years – ahead:

This dispatch from a Miami Herald blog is all about Major League Soccer’s desire to have Florida waive a 6-percent state admission sales tax for MLS all-star games taking place in either Miami or Orlando.

And this is just “kindergarten” stuff, so to speak. The real political wrangling when it comes to Miami’s ongoing expansion enterprise is the stadium deal, especially as the preferred site is on county owned land.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong here?

If you know your MLS history, you know all too well that messy politics has been a perennial obstacle in stadium discussions around D.C. United for a decade.

Same for the ongoing efforts for New York City FC to settle on a site for a permanent Big Apple home.

In a lot of ways, these cities, counties and states have a point though; why should the government finance a private enterprise out of which they see no direct profits? I can, perhaps, understand greasing the wheels of bureaucracy a bit on such a deal, but I’m absolutely against government funding for stadiums. If MLS and these millionaire and billionaire owners want to build a stadium, I’m sure they can raise money for it quite easily, why should taxpayers pay for it by giving them tax breaks and direct funding?

Hearing about political red tape in the Miami stadium situation for the days, weeks, and months, ahead is to be expect and nothing to fret over. If it stretches to a year or years then I think the viability of this venture will be nill.

Depends where you go, Arsenal funded the Emirates by themselves. Bayern shared costs of Allianz Arena with 1860 Muchen before buying them out with the latter had money trouble but Munich city and Bavaria state had to pay for the infrastructure costs around the stadium. In Italy a few stadiums are municipality owned and rented out to teams